Murdoch’s tweets can’t save his tottering empire

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On the night Queen Elizabeth scampered back from her Scottish castle to address an angry crowd outside Buckingham Palace â€“ the crowd protesting she hadnâ€™t paid enough respect to the memory of Princess Diana, killed in a car crash the week before â€“ Rupert Murdoch was in the newsroom of the London Times. â€śThereâ€™s your headline,â€ť he told the editor in charge. â€śQueen Saves Neck!â€ť It was a perfect tabloid headline for a perfect tabloid story.

That Diana, named after the goddess of hunting, should die hounded by a pack of snap-happy paparazzi added a vein of irony to the story of her tragic life. A similar irony informs the scandal engulfing Murdoch. The biter has been bit, a fact clearly on display when Rupert and his son James, arm in arm with their flame-maned employee Rebekah Brooks, were shoved and jostled in a London street by the newshounds of Fleet Street. Hauled before a House of Commons committee, the usually unrepentant mogul looked dented when he uttered the phrase that will litter his obituaries: â€śThis is the most humble day of my life.â€ť

His sense of humility didnâ€™t last long. Nothing has gone right for Murdoch since that day of shame, yet he quickly regained his old pugilistic self using a medium that perfectly suits his headline-writerâ€™s gift, the 140 characters of Twitter. Too cocky to hide behind an amanuensis, Murdoch is back on the attack, railing against â€śenemies many different agendas, but worst old toffs and right wingersâ€ť and vowing revenge. â€śSeems every competitor and enemy piling on with lies and libels,â€ť he tweeted. â€śEasy to hit back hard, which preparing.â€ť

While Rupert fiddles on his iPad, his empire burns. Scotland Yard â€“ which, according to the police themselves, had become a News Corp. subsidiary, leading to the resignation of the police commissioner, the head of counterterrorism and the communications chief â€“ is conducting three parallel investigations into bribery, corruption, phone hacking, computer hacking and witness intimidation by News Corp. employees. Senior policewoman Sue Akers has uncovered â€śa culture of illegal paymentsâ€ť to police and other public servants, meaning News Corp. may technically have broken the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act that deems bribing foreign officials a criminal act.

The company is paying out millions to the more than 800 victims its reporters and private detectives hacked, then humiliated, among them Tony Blairâ€™s wife, Cherie, former interior minister David Blunkett, actor Jude Law and singer Charlotte Church. So far News Corp. has paid $15.6 million to settle 54 lawsuits of the 60 filed by last October.

The scandal has enveloped Prime Minister David Cameron, who used to ride and socialize with Brooks before she became too toxic and who hired as his press chief Andy Coulson, former boss of Murdoch’s News of the World who had resigned from the paper after turning a blind eye to hacking. Coulson was driven out of his government post.

Murdochâ€™s hope that his children would succeed him at News Corp. now seems forlorn. His daughter Elisabeth blames Brooks for destroying the company, his son Lachlan hurriedly decamped for Australia after an unexplained incident in New York, and James had to write a groveling letter to his parliamentary inquisitors for failing to do his job. â€śI acknowledge that wrongdoing should have been uncovered earlier,â€ť he wrote. â€śI could have asked more questions, requested more documents and taken a more challenging and sceptical view of what I was told.â€ť

Murdochâ€™s Sunday Times recently revealed that donors who gave six-figure sums to Cameronâ€™s party could gain access to influence the prime minister. Yet Cameron secretly met with News Corp. executives 26 times in 15 months, including two trysts with Murdoch himself. Murdochâ€™s response? â€śWhat was Cameron thinking?â€ť he asked the Twittersphere. â€śThere must be a full independent inquiry â€¦ Trust must be established.â€ť And, â€śWithout trust, democracy, and order will go.â€ť Just so.

With all of these alleged crimes occurring in England, I am curious why nobody is investigating Murdoch’s American operation, Fox News, whose reputation as a legitimate news gathering and disseminating organization is a joke. Fox’s talking heads literally make up lies about those with whom they disagree — namely and pointedly Democrats — and a recent study showed that Fox News viewers are less well informed about current events than people who watch no news broadcasts at all.

It really appears as if everything the Murdoch clan touches turns bad.

Now would be an excellent time for the DOJ to initiate a well publicized Grand Jury process to determine the extent of Murdock’s US outlets’ illegal activities like, bribing US legislators, police, phone hacking, influence peddling etc, etc like their UK muckraker colleagues as well as the probability of News Corp. breaking the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act that deems bribing foreign officials a criminal act.

It’s time and past time to declare ‘Rupert’ an undesirable alien’ and send him back to Botany Bay.

Author Profile

Nicholas Wapshott is the International Editor of Newsweek. He previously served as New York bureau chief of The Times of London and editor of the Saturday Times of London. He is a regular broadcaster on MSNBC, PBS and FOX News. His new book "The Sphinx: Franklin Roosevelt, the Isolationists, and the Road to World War II" is due out in November. He is also the author of "Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher: A Political Marriage" and "Keynes Hayek: The Clash That Defined Modern Economics."